User Research, Goals, and Problems

Making a successful product means satisfying the needs of both users and the business; if you fail to cater to users, it will result in frustration with and even mistrust of your business, thus leading them not to use your product. When coming up with the concept for this product, our class made sure to keep this in mind throughout each stage of development. Just making something visually-appealing or feature-packed does not necessarily equate to a usable or valuable product.

User Research: Conducting Interviews

I used Google Forms to create a written interview, which generally followed the template another student shared with the class. I sent the form to friends and family, and also posted it publicly online. I gained form responses from 11 people between the ages of 24 and 58 (most were in their mid to late 20s). All resided within the United States (primarily Rhode Island, but one was from California). All participants either owned or often helped take care of a dog.

(If you are interested in the structure and all questions present in the interview form, you can view a screen recording here).

I asked about many things related to their dogs and dog walking, such as behavior, personality, medical conditions, whether or not they’ve thought about using a dog walking app, qualities they look for in a dog walker, and what would make using a dog walking app better for them. Below is some of the most important data I collected from the written interviews:

User Research: Constructing a User Persona

A user persona is a fictional portrayal of a target user for your product. Our online class broke out into groups to develop user personas based on our individual user interviews we conducted. My group came up with the following persona to use while developing our app solution.

(Image in this user persona was sourced from Unsplash).

User Observations I've Had in the Past

From the personal experiences of myself and people that I know, I can attest that apps can be frustrating sometimes for users. Many apps struggle with categorizing and displaying information in easy to understand ways, making performing what should be a simple action discouraging. I wanted my app to be very straightforward for anyone to jump in and use. I’ve also learned that it is important to design with web accessibility in mind for those with disabilities, and I tried to use what information and tools I had at my disposal to make my app compliant in terms of text size and color contrast. I plan on diving deeper into accessibility in the near future.

Business Goals

The ultimate, overarching goal of any business is to gain profit. In this case, that means gaining and retaining users that book dog walks. A portion of each walk’s profit would go to the business, so each walk booked would be critical to this product being a success.

Two other goals that tie into the first are saving money and time; this can be done during the app design and development phase. Creating simple wireframes of design ideas will help narrow down what is working and what isn’t before any time is spent on visual design. Making reusable, editable components (often for elements like buttons) during the UI design phase cuts down the amount of time needed to edit each individual object if stylistic changes are needed. Establishing a standardized design system keeps things consistent throughout the app and also eliminates any guesswork when creating new screens. Creating and testing working prototypes helps to pinpoint what is successful and what isn’t before any resources are spent on the development of the final app.

My Plan to Meet User and Business Goals

Business goals cannot be met without meeting the user goals. The way I determined I’d need to do this is:

• Make the app as accessible as possible by paying attention to contrast on main elements, as well as making things easy to navigate
• Provide a straightforward experience with minimal distractions
• Provide plenty of info for users who are hesitant, unsure, or new to dog walking apps, as trust is key
• Clearly outline how much services cost and what each walker offers
• Determine what would be present in the app and how the user would journey through it before spending time on design
• Get feedback from users and others in class
• Make use of reusable components and standardized styles when designing

Ideation

After conducting research and defining goals, it was time to move onto creating rough concepts of the app.

The Original User Flow Diagram

Creating user flow diagrams (or maps) are essential for planning what pages will be present in a digital product, knowing how they connect, and for outlining what paths the user will take through them. This is done before any wireframing or visual design takes place.

While my final user flow did change once the app was designed, this was the original one I had come up with for both the onboarding and booking a walk flows:

I used this user flow diagram as an aide during the wireframing process; it helped me to determine how the app would function and the journey the user would be taking. This part of the process also made it so I kept the user and business goals at the core of my focus.

The Original Wireframes

Before spending valuable time on visual design, it’s important to make sure your core idea is solid enough to be a truly effective solution. Wireframes are essentially bare-bones representations of your app or website design. They are general rather than specific, focusing mainly on layout and function; the final text, images, and visual design are usually not inserted at this stage. You can make wireframes using pen and paper, or even digitally, as I did for this project. While I didn’t do it for this class project due to time constraints, real teams will sometimes have users test a working prototype made up of wireframes so that they can get an idea of the project’s reception and what direction to go in.

For these initial concepts, I focused on making the app straightforward in terms of usage and information being readily available. I would later take many of these concepts and refine them, as well as break forms up into multiple pages to prevent the screens from being overwhelming.

What I Gained From This Course

This course expanded upon my existing design knowledge by extending it to the digital space, as well as giving me more insight into the goals and mindsets of both consumers and businesses. While there are several things I would change if I redesigned this project, I learned the beginnings of how to provide a positive experience and minimize frustrations or hesitation for users, which in turn helps to satisfy business goals. I’m glad that I decided to take this course, and I believe that it will provide value to me and any design or marketing team I work with.